Advanced LED Demo Grow by Doc Bud - Pruning Intervals

Doc Bud;2670737 said:

Icemud;2670702 said:

Hey Doc,

I had a question for you.

A while back I think I saw you mentioning before flowering you did a medium pruning of your plants to prep for flowering if my memory serves me correct.

Is there a specific method for this or do you target certain branches and/or leaves that you remove pre flowering? It seems that your plants always have fewer leaves and a lot of bud, and I was just curious on your method of selection of what to remove and also the time frame/part of the cycle you choose to do this..

thanks in advance

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I've shown all this with pictures in a tutorial form a few times. I think the first few pages of "In the Lab" has the info. Basically it's this:

1. during veg it is CRITICAL to let the pots go bone dry between watering. I mean dry to the point of 5 minutes more and the plants will wilt. Wet/Dry does a two key things: It causes way more roots to grow than foliage AND it improves the leaf to calyx ratio later on, which is what you're noticing.

I tell people about wet/dry all the time. Some people ignore the advice, especially "organic" folks who don't understand soil biology. They think if the soil dries out the microbial population will die, or some such nonsense. They seem to forget that myco comes in a dry powder.....anyways

2. I prune 2 to 3 times during veg. The first time is usually a topping and perhaps removal of a couple lower branches in order to give the plant its proper shape, which is 3 to 6 main tops.

The second pruning is what I call a "Pre-bloom" pruning, where on the 3-6 main tops I take everything from the bottom up to the top 3-5 nodes depending on the strain. With these Colombian I left 3 nodes intact and put them into bloom that day.

If there is a 3rd pruning, it happen in mid-veg and is done to clean up new branches so that I've got my main 3-6 working.

In bloom, when the bud sites are all well defined, I clean up the lower part of the plant so that I can see dirt looking straight down at almost any angle. I want light to penetrate all the way to the dirt. I see too many growers with massive amounts of leaves, substandard roots and less than optimal buds.

Massive roots=massive buds. Wet/dry=decrease leaf/calyx ratio......so if you do both of these things you'll get large buds and relatively few leaves.

There might even be a shot or two of the pruning on this thread. I seem to recall it. Ah....here! Advanced LED Demo Grow by Doc Bud - Page 11

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